


A Question of Ownership

by Daantjie_fanatics



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Creepy The Handler (Umbrella Academy), F/M, No Smut, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy has PTSD, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Touch-Starved Number Five | The Boy, rapey vibe but no actual rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daantjie_fanatics/pseuds/Daantjie_fanatics
Summary: Five had thought he hated physical contact. He had no way of knowing whether he’d outgrown that opinion.The Handler and Five have a complicated relationship. Five would rather not remember, The Handler wouldn’t let him forget. His family wish they could kill her all over again.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & The Handler (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 195





	A Question of Ownership

Number Five thought he hated physical contact, when his siblings had indulged in it often. When Luther and Allison found ways to hold hands, when Diego and Luther’s savage brawls had them twisting on the carpet and mom had to intervene with stern expressions and kind pushes. When Klaus hung off of Five’s shoulder in front of paparazzi and Five held his hands behind his back. When Ben put his feet where they’d grate against Five’s shoes as they read books in the same room. And especially when Vanya didn’t know how to handle contact either.

Because his father had never shown any of them affection. So he watched as they stole it from one another, like savages tumbling about the house and carelessly invading each other’s space. Or luring one another in, like hunters setting traps, tricking each other with the premise of serotonin. Dealing it like drugs, addictive, tempting but essentially empty gestures because when they took and gave so easy, didn’t that lower their value - make them easy to forget? Vanya never learned how to master any craft, and no one let her practise, but she still had that animalistic longing inside of her, Five knew. Five had been sure to stamp out that urge from a young age.

Intimacy is weakness no matter how you disguise it. After all, isn’t the best way to hide your face, in a hug? As long as no one touched him, they’d never notice the tremor in his fingers in anticipation of Dad’s cruel training. As long as they didn’t get too close they wouldn’t see the sweat beneath the hair of his forehead afterwards, or the harshness of his breathing. Thank God his power was the gift to run away. He prided himself of his ability to escape family moments, even if the cost was a little loneliness.

Number Five thought he hated physical contact, when his family were alive. When the offer was there and he had the option to turn it down, to look down his nose at his siblings and accomplish feats like time travel - skills much more impressive than his rank or dad ever suggested he be capable of. Most importantly, it limited distraction, to which each of his siblings had fallen slaves. Five ran out of the Academy, completely deaf to his siblings’ gasps and chairs scraping, his Dad’s yells.

And he ran straight into a world deaf to him. Dead fingers sprouting through crumbled concrete; burnt, twisted, eaten to the bone, reaching for him?

Five had thought he hated physical contact. He had no way of knowing whether he’d outgrown that opinion.

The handler had shown up, way too calm in front of his gun, and far too comfortable in such high heels on the rubble. Five hated being desperate, but the point of that was he had no other choice than to go with her. He’d mourned physical contact, but he wasn’t sure it was relief he felt holding her hand, which wasn’t cold and stiff and lifeless - like Dolores’, like his family’s, which he was leaving behind. It felt like stepping into the mouth of a shark. But he supposed it was either hitchhike or drown.

The Handler took Five’s rehabilitation as an excuse to overstimulate him. The fingerprints that she lined his jaw with, as he was shaved, burnt. Each touch filled him with unfathomable rage.

She pushed and pulled him like he wasn’t human, so he let himself be a monster. He threw himself into mission after mission. His anger found an outlet and he became 100% efficient at murder, all to lessen the time spent in company- her company. But every time he returned she needed to ‘celebrate’.

Five wasn’t scared of her. The only thing he allowed himself to be scared of was failure. Of waking up one morning in a wasted world beside the corpses of his siblings. If instead he woke up with the Handler’s legs either side of him, one hand on his lips and another stopping the gun under his pillow, because she didn’t put locks on his bedroom door, then he’d rather have that.

He learned to love the darkest coffee; lasting him days at work, nights not asleep. It didn’t always work.

Her heels clicked like the second hand of a clock, just as inevitable. She didn’t wait for him to say no, and he’d learnt early he didn’t have the privilege of saying stop. When she’d pulled him out of the apocalypse, he’d handed his life over. He owed her, owed her with anything she wanted and everything he had. Especially if he planned on leaving in 5 years or less.

He escaped her just like he’d escaped Reginald. But just like he couldn’t shake his dad’s “I told you so” out of his mind for almost 50 years, he couldn’t wash off the feeling of the handler. Her hands were sticky, imprinted on his skin - skin that had no right retaining the memory it technically hadn’t had yet in that body. And then there was the tracker. Like a dog chewing a leash, he ripped it out of himself- again he didn’t understand how it had stayed when his body had shrunk. Nevertheless he severed all ties to the commission; dropping the tracker, massacring their faceless agents (uniformless- clean up crew, not meant for major timeline corrections), evading Hazel and Cha-cha at every turn, and finding Dolores. He could save his family by himself.

Until he couldn’t.

Until even though he was now with his family, they still weren’t alive and he was still alone.

The Handler stood in front of him again, with the same calmness, the same high heels, and the same fucking look: “I told you so.”

Five lowered his gun, admitting defeat.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for any spelling errors etc.
> 
> Feel free to comment, I’d love to read them!


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